Change for a dollar?

Remember last November when a majority of Americans managed to pull our heads out of our asses and elect a leader that spoke constantly of hope and change ? I still haven’t seen universal healthcare, but I understand: he just got a new job, a new puppy, and I guess he bought a couple of car companies or something. But I wonder what he’d think about changing the look of our currency.

Marketing master Richard Smith has brought up the idea of changing the look of our bills. I always thought our money was pretty ugly, and in comparison to what the EU and other countries are creating, pretty damn low tech. My friend from Norway was shocked when he found that all denominations of American currency were the same size–how would a visually impaired person tell them apart ?

Not that I would like to see Barbie on a bill (or ads) but I think our Benjamins deserve a facelift. Why not put other influential leaders, besides Presidents whose contributions to our country are either overwritten or undermined these days, on bills and coins ? Isn’t it time for a Martin Luther King Jr, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or FDR ? Or even Jackie Robinson ! Sports are an enormous part of the culture of a nation: what would Canada be without hockey and Great Britain without football ? The Canadian $5 note features a quote from Roch Carrier’s eponymous story “The Sweater”, and it reflects upon the simple joys of youth and hockey:

For you non-Francophones, that says “The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places – the school, the church and the skating rink – but our real life was on the skating rink.” That quote, along with the cheeky little boys skating around on the back of the bill, totally explain the country. It’s Canada in a nutshell.

According to the look of American bills, we live in large columned mansions and suffer from some form of baldness. Oh, and everything’s green. Change, please ?